CYRUS HALL McCORMICK 



by a self-binder in two seconds. When the 

 wheat was cut in the old-fashioned way, with a 

 hand-sickle, every loaf of bread required eighty 

 seconds' labor instead of two. 



In a public test made last year in the State 

 of Washington, wheat was cut, threshed, ground 

 into flour, arid baked into biscuits in twenty- 

 three minutes. This is an evidence that all the 

 machinery for handling grain has now been 

 brought up to the same high level of speed and 

 efficiency as the self-binder. It also helps us to 

 understand the daily marvel of cheap bread 

 the fact that a hundred loaves of bread are now 

 delivered one by one at an American working- 

 man's door for the cost of a seat at the opera or 

 a couple of song-records by Caruso. 



So plentiful is this bread that the loaves baked 

 from American flour in 1907 would have made 

 a wall of bread around the earth, or have given 

 thirty loaves apiece to every human creature; 

 and so cheap has it become in these latter days 

 that even in the United States it is not more 

 than three cents a day per capita. The un- 

 skilled laborer who receives $1.50 a day, earns 



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